another day in the joy of making connection

Main menu

Post navigation

I have started flying again. Not in an airplane kind of flying. This flying is just me, one moment standing on the ground on my two legs with the thought, taking a few steps to initiate lift off, becoming horizonal above the earth, and then simply gliding though the air. There is no surge or need for overt power here. It is as easy as taking a breath. As exhilirating as the most unanticipated discovery. As natural a movement as any other I have ever experienced.

Crazy, right? You could say I am dreaming. My eyes are closed. I am lying in bed presumably asleep. I know I have flown like this before, and I know this way of being with the world is completely normal. No surprise, the flash of lonliness that appears. Who else flies like this? Until now I’ve never thought to ask or consider that there could be a real conversation with another about flying. I’ve never trusted that I could be heard and be able to continue the conversation even if they didn’t see or understand it my way.

It would be easy for me to dismiss this flying as just a figment of imagination, to want the acceptance that would come from such a view. But that would not be an authentic me. To acknowledge my own desperate wanting to belong I need to say, yes, I want to be part of something, AND, I want to stand alone, to fly all by myself, when I need to. It’s terrifying. But as Brene Brown goes on to say, “Your level of true belonging can never be greater than your willingness to stand alone and be yourself.”

It is no coincidence that another friend also recently recommended I watch a Netflix series called Sense8. We had been talking about unrest in the world, how the black & white of political/economic separation is creating a context that is increasing unbearable to even talk about. He has found some hope in this show that depicts a world where difference can be celebrated through ultimate connectivity and intimacy with others across the globe, within an intact individual identity that can communicate telepathically. It is classified as science fiction, but for me, this show vibrates with a completely believable portrayal of humanity offered in both difficult and beautiful, always heartfelt, ways of love.

Last spring I ventured deeper than usual into the woods in front of the swamp I knew was there, but had never actually seen. There was a call of the wild that I had been hearing in the days prior, and finally couldn’t resist. It turned out to be a nest of herons located high up in a lone tree growing out of the middle of the water. As Yogi and Nora romped in the vastness of the swamp waters, I watched as the birds flew back and forth from this perch, emitting their distinctive cries. there was a lumbering grace to the large bird being horizontal in a way that felt familiar.

I want to remember this feeling of gliding so easily between worlds, between truly authentic me and a community that can hold a truly diverse and sustainable way. A world where flying like a bird, or communicating telepathically, or even standing alone, can be normal too.

It was Monday morning, the third sunrise after Dad’s passing. We had started looking at photos, and Mom had pulled out a shot of the two of them that would be perfect for the obituary. I offered to crop in, the way I like to do on my iphone and turned on the camera function that shows me the last photo taken in the lower left corner of the screen. I hadn’t taken but one picture in the past three days, unusual for me as I am always snapping something that I see here or there. So I was surprised to see an image I didn’t recognize at all there. A flash of thrill went through me. I opened the photo full frame to find a scene of two small cabins at a water’s edge taken on a cloudy day. It wasn’t computing, what this photo was, where it was taken, or how it had landed in my camera. Looking more closely I couldn’t ignore the large milky orb right in the middle of the red cabin that filled the center of the photo. Or a smaller fainter orb about the same size below it.

Definition of orb (from Merriman-Webster online)

1: any of the concentric spheres in old astronomy surrounding the earth and
carrying the celestial bodies in their revolutions
2: archaic : something circular : circle, orbit
3: a spherical body; especially : a spherical celestial object
4: eye
5: a sphere surmounted by a cross symbolizing kingly power and justice

Seeing orbs in photos is controversial. Some believe it is a trick of the camera lense. Others believe it is a visible presence of a spirit in celestial form. I don’t have a hard time believing the latter. Whenever I see an orb in a photo, especially as prominently as this one, I feel a shiver go through me. My heart stops for just the briefest moment to register the energy of what is there. Looking down at this unrecognizable image in the wake of Dad’s passing, I wondered what someone, maybe even Dad, was trying to tell me.

Oh, I checked the time it was taken, 9:48 pm the night before (January 22). But I had been sound asleep with the phone on the bedstand next to me. I checked all the ways a photo could land in my album, through a mesage or what’s app chat. Nothing. I showed it to my brother who cycled through every rational explanation and came up blank, leaving even him with an uncharacteristic expression of confusion and resignation.

Two weeks have now passed and I continue to be haunted by this photo that still sits prominently in this place on my phone. It continues to taunt me to decipher its meaning. It’s no secret that I covet spherical forms, collect crystal spheres, embed spherical energy into my quilts, even watch for how the sun rearranges itself through the trees to be seen in the forest when I am there.

For someone who thrives on seeing meaning and connection in all things, this continues to be a mystery that offers no clues.

So I trust. I trust that the meaning will reveal itself in time. I trust that whatever part Dad has in this comes from his heart, that maybe he is letting me know how much he trusted too.

Dad’s obituary will run in tomorrow’s newspaper. I’ve had a week now to move through a range of shock, disbelief, grief, and acceptance of his passing, Surrounded by family, Dad died peacefully in his own bed after only one day of hospice. My mother, brother, and I have been re-adjusting to the feeling of three, not four. I don’t know what day it is. The space Dad has left is a huge culmination of molecules affected. The air we walk through here now contains both his essence and his absence. The words of sympathy and admiration for this man who forged an incredible life centered on family, friends, and community have been pouring in and we are resting in the truth of just how significanty Dad touched others.

When I am here, I love to capture the beautiful view my parents enjoy from their east facing exposure to Canandaigua Lake and the hills beyond. I have shared the glorious sunrises that fill the sky with color and drama during all seasons. I love them all, but it is the winter scenes that capture the spirit of something primal that I suspect Dad felt too. There is nothing more exhilirating than stark and cold of a brilliant winter day.

Dad loved to downhill ski. He became part of a devoted group of friends who would travel to Aspen each year. After several seasons of this, he decided to initiate the rest of us, taking us to Montreal to ski in sub zero cold one winter weekend. It took. We became a family of skiers through his passion, and had years of weekends together travelling to our beloved Holimont in Ellicottville NY early on Saturday mornings to be the first on the slopes, not waiting for lunch to eat Dad’s famous egg and olive sandwiches for breakfast in the car from the large lunch basket which we all whole-heartedly contributed to packing the night before. There was always fun apres ski with friends after the last runs, and then we’d drive to Jamestown to spend the night with our Gramma Ford, arriving to the smells of her home cooking that Dad grew up with. We would be back on the slopes again first thing Sunday morning, ski all day, then make the three hour drive home, always stopping for some of his favorite Perry’s ice cream on the way. Black raspberry was his favorite. Years of family ski trips to Vermont and Colorado followed. He and Mom skied in the Alps. He became known for his signature one piece Bogner suit and white hat. And finally, retired here to the Bristol Hills west of Canandaigua Lake, he would ski daily at his beloved Bristol Mountain, just minutes away from home.

When Dad broke his leg two years ago at the age of 83, skiing, he mourned his loss of time on the slopes. He never did ski again.

A week has gone by, and the snow that was here for Dad’s spirit to merge with is gone. Rest in peace Dad.

I am back with my parents in western New York State for the week. Ben is with me this time, a holiday visit to stretch across the space between Christmas spent apart from Nana and Papa this year as they continued their current journey with convelescence. Instead of making the kuebies (one of Dad’s favorite Christmas cookies) that are typically made on Christmas Eve, I made them on New Years Day, and the tin now sits on the table here as a reminder of traditions we have shared for so many years past. It’s not that that we haven’t had a Christmas apart in our individual homes ever before. It’s just that Mom and Dad coming to us in Massachusetts these past twenty years had become a tradition of its own. This year was just different, bittersweet as Molly Ben and their father John cocooned in my country home with the snow and peace of the day.

Still, feeling the difference on Christmas Day, worried, Ben asked if his grandparents were going to die. We all did our best to reassure him that they just needed to heal from their repsective surgeries, that it would be too hard for them to travel this year. Ben is no stranger to death. He remembers his Grammy K and Great Gramma Gigi, both had come to live in our community when they needed more support, both eventually moving to nursing homes where Ben would visit and provide comfort before they passed. One of us added philosophically that as human beings, we all age, just like Grammy K and Gramma GiGi, and we all die someday, trying to put the cycle of life into perspective for Ben. We even talked about Desi, our very old cat who now lived with John and was beginning to fail. Little did we know that the process of Desi letting go would begin so soon, that she would stop eating the day after Christmas, that Ben would be witness again to the poignant process of death.

I now sit for hours in my favorite chair here in the wee hours knitting, waiting for the sun, my view out to the woods at the side of my parents house, and remember the sunrise captured here a month ago.

I took the image home and let it simmer. There is something about the contrast of red on dark with glimpses of hills and sky between a tangle of bare winter branches that had captured my attention. My new stock of hand-dyed cloth made there in the fall, in the same hills as this image, was now sitting here on my studio work table alongside piles of commerical cloth scraps. It wasn’t long before I began to experiement with contrasts here too.

The developing blocks went up on my design board and it took only days to piece together a composition that evoked for me, the feeling of being there, watching for the sun’s playful presence. Now back here, sitting in the chair, waiting for sunrise, I travel across the space of my imagination between here and there, to my studio there, to time spent sewing it all together, knowing that my heart will be holding the essence of being here with my beloved parents at the same time.

Desi died the day after we arrived here. She was a beauty. My last image of her was in John’s lap New Year’s Day, a skeleten with fur, still emanating her beauty as John stoked her gently, back and forth, back and forth.

On Christmas day in the woodlands behind home, an extremely beautiful light was seen emerging from behind an otherwise blustery, snowy display of winter.

Today was also one of those spectacular winter days with intense bright sun and frigid air, extremes that also came together in a most compelling and refreshing way. It was the kind of day that was impossible to stay indoors for too long. Walking into the woods, body wrapped in layers of down and wool and protective footwear, felt really good on the one hand. It also felt really hard on the other. Soft fluffy snow on top of crunchy crusted over snow wasn’t deep enough for snow shoes, but just deep enough to make each step a slippery challenge. I was frustrated that I hadn’t brought my cramp-ons but I wasn’t going to turn back. Cranky and feeling the pressure of moving too slow, I urged Molly to go ahead, even if I didn’t want her too. The extreme beauty of the day had tossed me back into the turmoil of extreme emotion. What was this? How dare these extremes play with me so. Bittersweet feelings, my almost sixty year old body and soul wanting to just move as it wanted to move, not any faster, not any slower, not to the expectation of any other. I thought of all the years when my younger body and soul moved fast, really fast, and no doubt projected what could only be felt as the nature of my extreme energy then, to whatever companion I was with. I witnessed the flow of cool clear water co-existing with the beauty of crystallized snow,

compassion for my younger difficult self washed in, and I eventually re-united with Molly further up the path.

My current knitted project is more ambitious than usual. Using number six needles and thinner yarn, I have been experimenting with texture, mixing knit and purl, and a palette of color that features extremes as well, warm white accent in relation to purple, blue, green and gold. This one is taking a really long time. It evokes something traditional, perhaps even Peruvian or South American, as if to create some sort of context for the reality of my daughter actually being home here, in this very different home than where her heart has been for the past three years. I set the two small balls of yarn I am working with down into the bowl of crystals this morning (so Yogi won’t get them).

Another kind of extreme. Of soft glowing color resting with very hard and and dense, but equally glowing color. Both earth’s elements. The only seemingly insignificant difference is that the molecules that define one are simply moving slower than the molecules of the of other…

Home less than a day, Ben and I had already watched The Santa Clause 2, an annual favorite. Now the next day, just as we settled into a game of mancala, I casually asked him what he wanted for Christmas. Perhaps inspired by the magic that ligered from our movie viewing the night before, or perhaps it was just the moment he was waiting for to express the magic he was envisioning as a gift from Santa. Either way, I sat back in amazement and listened to a series of wishes that felt impossible to fulfill.

His first request was to go to ‘Rock Candy Mountain’. Literally. He described having his own tent to crawl into and when he came back out, he would simply be there in that magical place. He sounded quite clear in the process and the images that could transport him. I sat there frantically considering how I could adapt this into something that could in some way approximate what he was imagining, perhaps setting up my tent here by the tree for him to find in the morning, somehow empowering him to dream what he was imagining. I knew the feeling of this movie I had watched with him over and over as a child after all. Then grasping at straws, I suggested that maybe Rock Candy Mountain pnly lives in the set that was created to make the movie a long time ago and that the set was now gone, no longer real, that maybe Santa could bring him a new DVD of the movie instead. Ben looked at me with evey bit of the twenty-four year old he is, as if I was talking nonsense, and said, no, Rock Candy Mountain was real and that’s where he wanted to go. And at the same time he must have seen something desperate in my face because he switched gears, tried again. He said, “How about this Mom. I want the silver box that opens and fills the room with stars and I can then be with Grandpa’s Magical Toys”. He went on to describe all the toys in detail. I knew he was referring to another movie, but not anything I had ever watched with him when he was younger. So I pulled out my phone and went to Youtube, Ben guiding me until I found the show he was referring to. We watched together as the kids, left alone in Grandpa’s toy workshop, opened a silver box to release a magic swirl of tiny stars. It surrounded them like a mist, and shrunk them down to be the same size as the toys. Of course, the toys then came alive. That’s what Ben wanted then, to become small and become one with the toys. He was smiling joy at the possibility. Once again, my rational brain tried to suggest an alternative, but he would have nothing of my musings that only altered the feeling of the magic for him.

Ben is a very intelligent human being. He knew I couldn’t go there with him. So he switched gears agian. He smiled conspiratorily, came over to where I was sitting and whispered in my ear, “I want a heart, in a necklace”. He stood up, put his hands on his heart saying ‘a crystal, to wear right here”. Who is this boy, this man, this child of mine born with Down syndrome, as perfect to me as any child could be, that he can bring me to the verge of tears in an instant with his wise ways? I immediately went to the practical, wondering what kind of heart necklace I could actually find or make for him, trying to dispel my gender identified bias that it might not be appropriate. I even went so far as to suggest maybe a crystal heart he could hold in his hand, but he just looked at me blankly, dismissing once again any deviation from his vision.

Finding magic is a deeply personal thing. Who am I to judge where it lives for Ben? Or for my beautiful daughter Molly, whose heart sees magic in far away lands too. My kids don’t judge me for my obsession with trimming the Christmas tree just so, six boxes full of ornaments each year that somehow find their places together one more time. It is a feeling of magic that is hard won. When I put the first few on, it sems impossible that there will be room for all the rest. the kids put a few on, make an effort, but when I am left alone again with the tree, the boxes are still very full. I can’t leave it alone. I leave the room but the minute I come back I am picking up more ornaments, finding their places. Then there is always a moment, like the swirl of Ben’s stars, that I can feel the magic of light balancing with the amazing cacophany of little toys on the tree that have now come vibrantly alive for me.

Heck, even the dogs know how to find magic. Like Yogi’s daily capture of some thing inside that he runs outside with, that will have me donning boots and chasing him through the meadow to retreive because it is often something valuable, like my brand new shoes, or slippers, or piece of mail. I even found my wallet out there one day! What could be more magical than seeing his human come alive, chasing him to his heart’s desire.

In these cold dark days it is good to find the magic where I can, in the light, in traditions that inspire, in the simple sight of the world coming alive each morning,

I’m at that exciting place in the publishing process, when the final proof has been approved and printing is about to begin. I’ve worked hard to get here. First the years of writing and re-writing and finally hiring a professional editor to bring the book home with polish. I was fortunate enough to be able to barter one of my quilts for graphic design services with a colleague who makes her living as a book designer. Finally, the wonderful local Leveller’s Press is able to print color and black & white on the same paper, eliminating the need for the book to be ‘all color’ and thus, making this endeavor, full of color photos, affordable. I’ve discovered that I am good at the details, happy to proof and proof again until everything is just right. I’m just plain thrilled to be getting this unusual book in print.

During the first proof review, when you get to see the book actually bound for the first time, when all the last details pop up to be addressed, it was suggested that as publisher, I could come up with a name. Walking in the woods the next day, I opened my awareness to the possibilities. Almost immediately the words ‘road to home’ came to me. And like being drawn to that expensive skein of yarn the minute you walk through the door, coming back to it after looking at every other possibility in the store, and not thinking twice at this point at the cost, these three words eventually became Road to Home Press. I just kept coming back to the feeling of a perfect fit, for capturing the spirit of growth, that no matter what road you choose for staying open and aware, the potential for experiencing awe and love in relation to who or what or where you are, is always there.

No coincidence of course that Facebook offered me this quote I posted five years ago…

“Make that desire to stay aware really tasty so you can evolve. Evolution is the best game in town, and there is no better high than an epiphany.” – Ana T. Forrest

Walking in the woods with the dogs through the first real snow this morning, I felt the excitement of Road to Home Press being on the verge of delivering it’s first offering. As with all that follows when I make the desire to stay aware ‘tasty’, when the outcome is equally uncertain, I know I can aways see another possible road to home in front of me.

I call the dogs and they come running for their tasty treat.

And though I know they are bound to me with invisible ties of loyalty and love, it is important that I continue to make their desire for coming home truly worth their while. Even waiting for a moment to deliver the treat can cause anxiety and concern…

The snow has now started to come down hard. The dogs head back outside, they find their individual toys and do their individual romps. And then there is a sparkling moment where their play evolves into a rare nose touching of peace and stillness between them. I embody the sweet feeling. This too feels like home.